Always Have Been, Always Will Be
by 9091
Summary: The Apocalypse is back on the table.  Michael and Lucifer go back to the drawing board to get Sam and Dean Winchester to act as destiny had intended.
1. Chapter 1

_It had taken years to arrange this meeting. Not years, exactly. Years were an ersatz measurement. But even by Heaven or Hell terms, glaciers melted faster._

_Michael was in the body of a broken-down lumber worker who came to this bar every night on his way home from work, who stayed until closing. Who looked into a glass like it was going to give him some wisdom. Who was waiting to die, who prayed every night. And when he said "Yes", it was like a breath was being punched out of him._

_Lucifer had gotten into a redhead, late 30s, starting to flake. She'd seen better days, but she wouldn't again. She put out her Marlboro Red in Michael's scotch and flicked it on the ground._

"_Always the diplomat," Michael said gravely. The smug smile didn't go with the tired face and turned it into a grotesque mask for three seconds._

"_Fuck you," said Lucifer, but sounding flat, not angry. "Talk."_

"_It's back on the table."_

_Lucifer's redhead sat up straighter. "What?"_

"_It's back on the table," Michael repeated, slower. "I can write it on the napkin if you're having trouble with the words."_

"_There's no back on the table," Lucifer spat. "None. This isn't happening."_

_Michael smiled, the mask even more grotesque. "It is."_

"_The vessels —?"_

"_Same vessels."_

_Lucifer looked like he was going to knock everything off the bar, but the murmur of the other patrons swelled around them, and he stopped. "If I had known I could use my true vessel again…"_

"_That__ sounds __like __a __personal __problem,__" __Michael __said __softly, __letting__ the__ scotch __burn __down__ the __throat __of__ the__ lumber__worker, __hearing __the__ lumber __worker__'__s __soft __gratitude __from__ deep __inside, __like __hearing __something __through__ concrete, __through __glass, __through __a __cocoon. __ "__But__ that__'__s __so _you_, __isn__'__t __it? __So__ short-sighted. __ '__Can__'__t__ use __my__ vessel __this__ one __time? __I__ know,__ I__'__ll __break__ it.__' __Like __a __petulant __child,__ urinating __in __a __sandbox __so__ no__ one __else __can __play __in__ it.__"_

"_Fine, then I will work with the vessel I was destined, and I will still hand you your ass."_

_A laugh now. "You're talking like my destined vessel. Have you been spending time with him?"_

_No response to this. It was a real question, too._

"_What do we do?" Lucifer asked. The redhead looked so determined._

"_As my vessel might charmingly phrase it, we bend space and time over, and we fuck them in the ass."_


	2. Chapter 2

Frank was just another kid on the bus. He was 11 years old. Big dark eyes, big dark circles under them. He was reading The Fountainhead. In his head, he was pretending to be like Howard Roark: hard and focused, centered and controlled.

He wasn't supposed to be on this bus, or even in the city. His school had gone on a field trip. When the school buses starting loading up, he hid inside the museum by the trashcans. The thought of going home made him need to wipe tears on the inside of his jacket. Wiping tears on the inside of his jacket reminded him that his eye was still black from two days before. He'd stolen Mom's concealer. People could still tell. Little clucks of the mouth, looking at him and looking away. _Poor __boy_, and then doing nothing.

But Howard Roark wouldn't let that kind of thing bother him. Howard Roark would say: Hit me all you want, motherfucker. I'll be back tomorrow.

Howard Roark wouldn't be hiding on a bus, wondering when he was going to be chased off for cheating the fare. Frank didn't think so.

He found himself staring at the kid sitting on the bus across from him, the only other "kid" he'd seen all day. All the others were at school? A teenager, maybe. This boy looked like Howard Roark felt. Sitting slumped down in the seat, crotch even with the edge of the seat, knees making personal space on either side of him, loud music blasting out of his headphones for all to enjoy.

"What the fuck are you looking at?" He asked Frank, his voice loud to be heard over his own music.

Frank jumped at the sudden knife wound in the silence. "What? I'm… nothing. I wasn't —"

"You were. You got a problem or somethin'?"

"No! I'm sorry. I was just thinking."

The boy across from him snarled slightly. And even though Frank kept reading his book, he could still feel the glare. His face got red and flushed at the attention. What would Howard Roark do? Howard Roark would get off the bus. When the driver announced the next stop, that's what Frank decided he would do.

There was a sharp jab to his shin. The boy across the way had scooted forward to kick him. His headphones were around his neck now, music still blasting.

Frank looked at him, panicked. He realized they were the only two people in this bus except for the driver. He didn't know how long until the next stop. And this kid scared him, more than Dad.

The kid jerked his chin at him. "What happened to your eye?"

Frank put his hand over it. Like that would do any good. "Nothing."

The kid scooted back, knees so far apart that the soles of his boots were touching. "Nothin' have a name?"

No one had ever asked. No one had ever just asked like that. _Poor__ boy._ Frank felt his teeth shake in his mouth, felt big stupid tears sliding down, stinging the little cut from Dad's ring.

"Ah, hell," said the kid, exasperated, so sorry he asked. "Don't cry, for fuck's sake." He looked all around, like he was embarrassed for the empty seats around them. "Have a backbone, man."

Frank swallowed it down. This kid was right. Howard Roark would have a backbone. Howard Roark would say _fuck__ crying_. Crying was such a Peter Keating thing to do.

"What's your name?" the boy asked him.

"Frank," he answered.

"Well, Frankie, my name's Shawn." Shawn sat up now, appraising him. "Where you headin'?"

Frank didn't like Frankie, but he shook his head. "I don't know."

"Where you live?"

"Not around here," Frank said, holding on to his book for dear life, and then putting in on the seat next to him, trying to hard-jaw back at this Shawn kid. Like Howard Roark.

"You don't have a home?"

Frank looked right at him, breath coming out in little bursts. "I don't want to go back there."

Shawn smiled. And his face changed, a lot. It got handsome, more interesting. "So don't."

Frank had missed the next stop. And then he just started talking to Shawn. And then Shawn was sitting next to him instead of across to him. Frank missed the stop after that one, too.


	3. Chapter 3

_They were two middle-aged men in an elevator now. Jumped on their way out of a board of trustees meeting. Michael wondered why his vessel's cock was so hard, from just a meeting. That was something his destined vessel would do, getting hard for no understandable reason._

_Lucifer's now-vessel was fat and had rosacea. He'd been one of the lower-level people in the meeting. Michael laughed at him. _

"_Why are you… erect?" Lucifer asked, disgusted._

"_It's because you're so beautiful," Michael answered, hitting the emergency-stop button. "We only have a moment in time before this situation gets more complicated than I'd like."_

"_How in the fuck did they get on the bus together?"_

_Michael shrugged. His confusion was sincere. "I don't know. Mine only got there two weeks before. He's living in some guy's extra bedroom in exchange for fellatio. In one and a half days, Frank will go to stay with him for safety."_

"_In exchange for even more fellatio," Lucifer smirked._

"_Shawn will do whatever it takes to protect Frank." Michael said this like it was a scathing indictment. _

_Lucifer's fat, slack-jawed vessel reacted like it was._

"_Soft little Frank." Michael spat on the floor of the elevator. It went on the shoe of Lucifer's vessel. "So quick to pee in the pool, aren't you? Across everything. Across fate and destiny. You little prick."_

"_How was I supposed to know he'd stay in the fucking museum?"_

"_Because when the going gets tough, your vessel takes shelter. Do you even know your vessel? You've fucked up this timeline for both of us. All you had to do was push him out of the museum and onto the bus."_

"_And all you had to do was keep your vessel where we agreed he would be."_

_Michael shook his head. He didn't get pissed like this often, and he smoothed it down along with his vessel's very nicely tailored shirt. "In five days, Shawn will take a kitchen knife and kill the man who is providing them with shelter. He will assume the man's identity."_

_Lucifer's repulsive meat smiled at him, because it meant they had to do-over, sure, but it also meant Michael lost and that was sweet. "And he will tell anyone who asks that Frank is his — "_

_Michael punched him, hard enough to send him into the side of the elevator, hard enough to send him ass-first onto the floor when he bounced off. "Shut your God-damned mouth."_

_Michael realized his vessel's penis was even harder now than before. He was unsettled as he left the vessel._


	4. Chapter 4

Ray pulled the mask over his face. Ray was an undercover cop in Detroit. He'd been hairline-deep on this case for a year, and it was all coming to a close. He was trying to ignore the feeling in the pit of his stomach. It was his "something's not right" feeling.

And the feeling had never been wrong.

Scott McClain, the group's leader, had relapsed last week. He gotten back into meth. And what had been a flawlessly planned heist made by a straight-edge rich kid with too much time and no morals whatsoever was now degrading into a nightmare clusterfuck. In Scott's initial plan, Ray could maneuver, could turn this thing wrong-side out from inside.

Scott was staring at him now, red eyes, sadistic smile. "Something bothering you, Jack?"

Ray forgot for a moment that his name wasn't Ray right now. It was Jack. He shrugged. "I'm always on guard before we go into one of these things. You know that, man."

It went exactly the way that Ray could've predicted. Scott fired off in the bank too soon, jolted on crank. It got ugly, fast. It turned out that Scott found out Ray was an informant three days before, and Ray was put on the floor with the other hostages.

He was under the table where people filled out their deposit slips. It was dusty under there because no one used paper deposit slips anymore, and the bank hadn't removed it. He was thankful, though. It put him out of the way.

In front of him, a young guy in a striped shirt with a gold bank name tag stood up, keeping his hands on his head. "Umm, hello? Sir?"

"Sit down!" Ray hissed at him, slapping the floor in frustration. "You're going to get your dumb ass killed!"

Someone stood up with Striped Shirt, a customer with dyed black hair and an eyebrow piercing. It looked like at any second, he was going to start yelling "Attica!"

Scott was so fucked up, that's all it was going to take to turn this into a mass grave.

"Fuck!" Ray growled, standing up, drawing attention to himself. He held up both hands at Scott, who was holding his goddamn sub-machine gun up to his face like he was going to kiss it, laugh and blow holes in every one of them. He had a Desert Eagle in the other hand. That was how Scott McClain liked to do it.

Still with his palms showing above his head, Ray talked as loud as he could to everyone on the ground. "I don't like this any more than any of you, but if you lay down and stay quiet, and don't make any moves, you can live through this, okay?"

Eyebrow Ring took a step forward. Scott took aim at him. Eyebrow Ring smirked and Scott used the .50 to blow a hole in him.

Whatever exited out of Eyebrow Ring hit Ray in the soft part of the calf. Ray bit down hard on his lip as the white noise of pain blew through his his and obscured his vision, but kept standing. He'd had worse.

Striped Shirt jumped at Eyebrow Ring being blown away next to him. Anyone would have seeing someone taken out like that. This movement alone was enough to make Scott itchy on the trigger, and he raised the .50 at Striped Shirt.

Ray wasn't sure why, but he jumped up. He jumped on his gushing leg and he knocked Striped Shirt to the ground. He put his body over Striped Shirt. Elbows on either side of Striped Shirt's forearms, center of mass even with Striped Shirt's spine. Striped Shirt had his face flat on the floor and Ray had his head planted on the side of Striped Shirt that was in the way of the bullet, looking right at Scott. He felt the bullets go over him, past him. He couldn't hear anything, a shot had gone too close to his ear. Everything was howling and keening and his own hard breathing.

Ray craned around. A security guard was laying next to him, arms over his head. He still had his gun on him, but he was panic-attacking into the ground. Ray wondered how they'd missed him.

In the guard's ear he said, "Tell your company I took it from you."

He didn't wait for a response. He got in front of Striped Shirt. He looked down at him and nodded. Striped Shirt looked as confused as Ray felt.

And then Ray blew McClain away. He blew McClain's best friend Antoine away. He blew them all away. _Boom. __Boom. __Boom. __Boom._

He didn't realized he was shot himself, in the gut, until the last man fell. And then whatever adrenaline was holding up Ray made him topple too, right onto Striped Shirt.

Striped Shirt still had his hand on Ray's stomach, and he frowned, looking no more sure about doing this as Ray had felt about killing the group one at a time. But like it had to be done. Like there was no question at all.

Striped Shirt's name tag said "Charles." And for a delirious losing-blood moment Ray thought _Ray__ Charles_ and laughed. Which he shouldn't've done, because the muscles he moved for it made blood soak across the few dry parts of his shirt.

"Heya, Charlie," Ray said up to him.

Charles frowned at him, still pushing on Ray's stomach. He was wearing only a thin white undershirt now. He'd taken off the striped shirt to put on Ray's wound.

"Wh — Why?" Charles asked him, peering down into his face, sandy hair falling over into his eyes.

"I'm a cop," Ray rasped out and blood dribbled out of his mouth.

Charles looked over at Eyebrow Ring, who wasn't Eyebrow Ring anymore, but Dead.

And Ray decided to call him Dead now. And laughed again. Ugh, bad idea, it hurt so fucking much.

"You didn't jump in front of _him_," Charles said.

Ray flopped his head over to look at Dead. All he could get out was "Huh."

He turned back to Charles, and Charles was looking straight into his eyes like _don__'__t__ die,__don__'__t __die_. And Ray didn't know why, but it was kinda funny in a way that no one else would get, but death? Death didn't feel like he thought it would. It didn't feel like much of anything. It was like trying to describe the taste of water. But it wasn't bad. It felt like it was going to be okay, because Charles seemed okay, and that was good and everything seemed so simple.

Charles didn't even look away from Ray to cry out, "I need help! _I __need __help __over __here! __Somebody,__ PLEASE._"

As darkness and quiet licked around Ray's edges, he felt Charles' hands tighten on his shoulders and lift him up.


	5. Chapter 5

_Lucifer was a doctor walking down the hall of a busy metropolitan hospital. _

_The intern next to him was an intern one second, and Michael the next. _

"_How?" Lucifer said, biting off the word, incredulous. "My vessel's worked at that bank for months, okay?"_

_Nurses and patients and staff had turned to look at them. They'd both be gone soon enough so they didn't care._

"_It__ shouldn__'__t__ have__ even__ mattered,__" __Michael__ said. __ "__It__ shouldn__'__t __have. __Your__ vessel__ is__… __is__ a_ stranger_. __I__ don__'__t __even__ know__ how__ mine __got __into __that __town, __or __on __that __job. __I__ tried __everything__ to__ stop __it. __They __weren__'__t __even __supposed__ to __pick __that __bank. __I__ don__'__t __even __know __how __this __happened. __Why __did__ your__ vessel __stand__up?__"_

_And they knew. They knew in that instant that Lucifer's vessel stood because, at the core of who they needed him to be, he was the guy who stood up and tried to keep people calm. And Michael's vessel was the guy who stood strong in front of Lucifer's while he was trying._

"_How are we going to do it now?" Lucifer asked, and didn't like the helpless whine in his vessel's voice._

_But it was only the intern staring at Lucifer now. Michael was gone._


	6. Chapter 6

Vince Haley hadn't had a visitor at the prison before, unless you counted his lawyers, psychiatrists and one stupid bitch named Alison who said she wanted to write an article about him.

It took him a few second to realize that the man on the other side of the safety glass had been sitting behind the prosecutor at his trial, crying the whole time. That was two years ago.

Vince turned the chair around to straddle it and picked up the receiver. "I know you."

"I forgive you," was all the man said.

Vince almost dropped the receiver. "What?"

He couldn't remember the dude's name, but he could remember killing his girlfriend. It wasn't intentional, but he'd done it all the same.

He remembered the name now, from when they called him as a witness. _Danny_.

"Danny," he said to him, to tell him he knew. "Listen, I'm in here for the next 23. You come to gloat?"

Danny was crying already on the other side of the glass, but shook his head. "I just came here to say that."

"Gloating's okay," Vince said. "You can if you want. You've got every right."

Danny didn't look surprised. Vince thought he should've been, because those letters where he wrote all the victim's kin telling them he was a worthless fucker who deserved to die were still shoved under the mattress in his cell.

"She wasn't who I was after," Vince said, and he already wanted out of this conversation. This isn't how he planned it. He hadn't planned it at all. And who was this dude to come to him and throw around forgiveness anyway? Who even fucking did that?

"I read your file," Danny said. "They gave it to me. Your wife was killed, your son was killed. The state messed up the chain of custody on the evidence, the guy got away. You saw a shot at him, you took it."

Vince snorted. "Thanks for the recap, 'cause, you know, I forgot how it went down."

He wanted Danny to get pissed, to punch the glass, to call the guards, to have Vince dragged back to his cell where he was safe from stupid shit like forgiveness.

But Danny sat there, quietly, looking at Vince's face the whole time. "I read your file. I understand what you did. I understand why. I understand that shit happens, man. But I've been praying on it. I've been praying on it every morning and every night for the past year. I was so angry, I was… I was going to find a way in here and cut your throat." He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. "But I read about you, I prayed and I called up here and they said you were on suicide watch."

So that was how he knew. Vince shrugged. "They can't watch me all the time."

Danny looked down for a long time and then back up again. "My girlfriend's name was Jessica. She had blond hair and green eyes. She was going to be a doctor, but she didn't know what kind yet. When your stray bullet hit her, I had a ring for her in my pocket. Dinner reservations. She was 25. She grew up back east, an only child. She was at school on a rowing scholarship, if you can believe that. She wanted two kids, and she wanted them with me."

Vince felt his jaw go hard. "Why are you doing this? Why? Do you think I don't know? Do you think I don't know she was human, man? I know, okay? The first chance I get, I'm not gonna be your problem or anyone else's."

Danny smiled softly and shook his head. "I came to talk to you about my girlfriend. And I want you to talk to me about your wife and your son."

Vince's eyes went wide, the blood sucked out of his face. "Why would you want that? Why would anyone fucking want that?"

The man was calm, and in the face of it, Vince thought he might shake apart. Danny said, "Man kills your family, you kill what would've been mine… and then I kill you and then I go down for it, and I end up where you are? I prayed on it, and I realized, that's not how anything gets done. That's how everything keeps breaking. So… let's not break it." He looked up at Vince in desperation. "I talk to you about her, you talk to me about them, and maybe something good comes out of it."

"I can't," Vince whispered.

"It would help you."

"I'm tired, man. I'm tired and I want out of this. I'm not gonna do 23 more years in here. I'm gonna die, and I'm gonna rot in the ground 'cause my family is dead."

Danny looked angry now. "You can't. You know why? Because you owe me. You owe me this much. You owe me to be here and listen to me talk about her. Because I miss her, man. I see her in my dreams. I reach for her at night. I reach for her at night and _you __owe __me_."

Vince's eyes were stinging. "Don't do this. Look, find a therapist, do something. But don't fucking do this to me. I can't take it. I can't. I can't carry more than I've already got."

"Can't or won't?" Danny asked.

Vince didn't know the answer to that. He bit the inside of his jaw so hard he tasted blood.

Danny nodded, like he understood something now, something he didn't understand before. "I'm going to be here tomorrow. And I'm going to be here the next day. You know why? Because I've got nothing but time, man. And neither do you. Because you owe me, and I see in your face… you know it. You know it for sure. At the end of the day, what we lost? God says it's the same thing."

Danny hung up the receiver, pushed the plastic chair away and left. Left past the guards, without looking back at Vince. Vince realized that he still had the receiver pressed to his ear as he watch Danny disappear down the long prison corridor.


	7. Chapter 7

"_How__ was __I__ supposed __to __plan __for __fucking _forgiveness_?__" __Michael __screamed,__ breaking __the__ glass __on __a__ medicine__ cabinet__'__s __mirror, __where__ he __had __jumped __into __some __sorry __bastard __who __took __20 __different __prescriptions._

_Lucifer, who had reluctantly jumped into the sorry bastard's wife, didn't answer. It was a rhetorical question._

_After that, they tried many different things._

_They tried age differences. When Dean was an older man, Sam was a younger man. Sam was the young man who went to sit with Dean in the hospital and read to him while he took chemotherapy treatments. (The cancer was to make Dean too weak to fight for Sam; it hadn't worked)._

_When Dean was an older man and Sam was a teenager, Dean saw Sam living downtown while he was in on a business trip. When Sam was an older man and Dean was a younger man, Dean gave him a kidney (a kidney, they couldn't believe it) and they talked. _

_When Michael and Lucifer put them on opposite sides of the country, Dean took a road trip and found Sam hitchhiking in the rain and gave him a ride.  
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_When Dean was a woman and Sam was a man, they found their way to each other. When San was a woman and Dean was a man, they found their way to each other. When they were both women, they found their way to each other._

_What they needed was total strangers, artificially injected in the timelines they were given, without sacrificing the personalities and the bloodlines that were so hard-wired into each of them. _

_It didn't matter. Each took bullets, lost their lives and dedicated themselves to the protection of the other, every single time._

_No matter how hard they tried, how far apart they put them, no matter what culture they put them in, no matter what ethnic background they gave them, no matter how unlikely or heinous they made the circumstances of them meeting…_

_The Winchesters found their way to each other._

_Every time._


End file.
